su from root to user on remote server with working display.

[Joakim Brosten]

God morning,

I need to test some of my users graphical applications/environment running as them on their Linux boxes from time to time. The problem is that I don't know the users password. The way I would like to solve this is to login as root, (that password I know), on their Linux box using "ssh -X root@linux_server" then "su - user_name" but by doing that, I loose the DISPLAY variable. If I try to export the same variable that is set for the ssh as root session, ssh won't allow the traffic.
Any good idéas?

Thanks in advance, /Joakim

[Stuart Browne · Accepted solution]

If you have this level of access, why not set up a shared key, so an account using this specific key (kept nice and secure by you) can ssh in as the user.. ?

[Joakim Brosten]

Hi Stuart,

thank you for replying. This seems to be a good solution. I tried to "man ssh" to find more info but didn't succeeded. Could you please point out the direction for more knowledge?

Thank you, /Jocke

[Ivan Ferreira]

Please see:

http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/linux-how-to-how-to-ssh-without-password-authentication/

[Joakim Brosten]

Stuart, Ivan,

Thank you for help. We have a NIS environment which makes it a little more complicated but I've gone through the "trial and error" state now and think I know how to solve the matter.

Thanks again, points to be awarded.

/Joakim